Lullabies for Little Criminals by: Heather O' Neill

Genre: Adult Fiction, Contemporary
Published: October 17, 2006 by: Harper Perennial
Pages: 330
Rating: 4/5 stars

At just thirteen years old, Baby has had to grow up too fast. With a single father with a serious heroin habit, and living in the red light district of Montreal, Baby has seen things that most children grow up years not knowing much about. Throughout her years, she makes friends. Some good, and some bad, but it is her growing relationship with a local pimp that finally makes her dad look up and get involved. Baby has been put into some dangerous situations, but will she be able to get out?

Wow. This book was just: wow. It was incredibly disturbing, and sad, and uncomfortable. And yet, I somehow couldn't put it down. I was shocked at how everything seemed so real, and so poignant. It almost read like a memoir, and although I'm pretty sure it wasn't, it was incredibly compelling to read.

First things off, these characters were unlike any I've read before. The thing with Baby is, that her norm is so different to any other 13-year old. Because of this, she talks about things that she believes in that we would never dream believe was right. For example, she think it's normal for a 40 year old pimp to be with her, she thinks that it's normal that her father sometimes overdoses and is in the hospital from time to time. It's so interesting to see the mindset of someone who has been immersed in such hardship all her life, that it just seems normal. She is a product of her own environment.

I will say that everything in this book is hard to deal with. There is no comic relief, just a lot of children being put into a lot of disturbing situations. This book deals with drugs, prostitution, childhood rape, suicide, and even the living conditions of these people may be hard to deal with. Now I can usually be unaffected by books that skim the surface of these topics, but this book got so deep so fast, that I felt like I couldn't possibly give it 5 stars, because I didn't necessarily enjoy reading some of the content.

I can't say that reading about a child prostitute was "amazing," because truth be told, it wasn't, but that isn't to say that these stories shouldn't be told. I think it is vital to our society, especially people who live in big cities, to be aware of what goes on in some of the areas. So I applaud this author for getting real, and I think from a psychological standpoint, this book was quite interesting, but if you are sensitive to any of the above topics, I would give this a pass. This book was rough.

Have you read Lullabies for Little Criminals? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess